


Make You Feel My Love

by MuffledWalnut



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Multiple One-Shots, One Shot, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7065178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffledWalnut/pseuds/MuffledWalnut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The galaxy is a large place. There are billions of people, and any one of them could be The One. </p><p>One-shots depicting the first meeting of soulmates, where soulmates can feel each other.  Many different pairings to be added to the tags as they're written. Next chapter: Shepard/Thane</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One in Five

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snusnu95](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snusnu95/gifts).



> So this is my response to absolutely *struggling* to write a decent chapter 15 for my larger fic, Who Do You Fight For? I've owed my friend, snusnu95, a one-shot with Liara and Shepard for a while now, so here it is! I've also decided to make it a collection of one-shots, so there will be multiple pairings throughout. I can't really promise that this will be regularly updated (WDYFF has to take priority in my schedule), but I love soulmate AUs so I'll write when I can. 
> 
> And, yes, I chose the title because of the song by Adele (which was apparently covered already by a million other artists. But Adele's is the only one I've listened to).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First Pairing: Female Shepard/Liara

When Liara felt _them_ for the first time, her soulmate, she was crouched over a overly verbose text detailing theories of Prothean social structure. At first it just felt like a pinch in her chest, but then it turned into a flood: the raw emotions accompanying someone who had just been _born_. Liara’s mother had warned her it could happen. In fact, most asari felt the moment of their soulmate’s birth simply because few but other asari had their long lifespan. So when Liara felt her soulmate at the tender age of 77, she couldn’t help but be openly devastated.

How many times had she wished for a soulmate that would be born later in her lifetime? Hundreds of times at least. It would be better that way, she told herself. She didn’t want to be forced to live on centuries without them. That, or she had wished for her soulmate to be an asari, but somehow Liara just _knew_ that her soulmate wasn’t an asari either. Doubly devastated.

Liara looked at the date on her omni-tool: April 11, 2154. And so the race began.

* * *

 

“What are you guys talking about?” Shepard asked, throwing her gym bag on her bed before letting her exhausted body follow it.

“Ryan found his soulmate yesterday,” a dark haired woman Shepard had never bothered to learn the name of said. Her fellow soldiers-in-training looked up at her with eyes glossed over in romance and hope.

Shepard scowled. “Well, bully for him,” she replied, turning away in her bed and ignoring the offended twittering of the other women in the room.

Shepard knew her soulmate was alive already the same way she knew that her soulmate was an asari: she somehow felt _her_ there, a light presence always floating in the back of her mind. But she also knew the odds of her even finding her soulmate were slim to none. All the crazy stories told in the barracks—the long time favorites were even repeated almost daily—never failed to send her into a foul mood. They were tales of impossible romance: guy finds girl in a dark movie theater while on a date with another girl. Girl knows girl their entire lives, but they don’t figure it out until one of them is sent off to war. Much tears ensue. No one wanted to talk about how only one in five people would ever even set eyes on their soulmate.

* * *

 

 _Who knew having a soulmate could be so abusive?_ Liara thought as she rubbed at her forehead. A splitting pain had run through it a few days earlier before stopping abruptly, but only hours after, it had begun to ache and seemed content to continue to do so across her entire skull. _What in the world are you doing?_

Liara shook her head to try and dispel the throbbing in her head again without success. The sensation was making it hard to concentrate on what she was doing, namely her careful investigation of some Prothean ruins. She was poking around a control room, hoping to try and power some of the ancient systems back to life. It was unlikely, but this particular ruin had been wonderfully resistant to the ravages of time. Liara had even managed to get the lights on yesterday.

Her head gave a particularly nasty throb followed by a sharp pain at the joint of her shoulder. Liara hissed and clenched her teeth, jerking her hand just as she’d gone to type a command into the Prothean console. She noticed only at the last moment the whirring of the Prothean machine as it powered up, and a security field suddenly encased her.

Liara’s eyes looked around in panic, her head all the way through her legs thoroughly trapped. She had come here alone; none of her colleagues had thought this ruin worthwhile. By the time someone noticed she hadn’t checked in and actually worried enough to come to this planet to find her...Liara gulped.

* * *

 

“Commander, why do you keep doing that?” Ashley asked, her mouth twisted up in annoyance.

“Doing what?” Shepard replied, not looking at her. She was too distracted by this burning in her throat. Shepard had spent all morning chugging water, and now even her travel canteen was empty. She knew it wasn’t _her_ thirst that was doing this to her; it was her soulmate, wherever she was, but Shepard couldn’t help but keep drinking in an attempt to soothe it.

“You keep making that noise in your throat,” Ashley answered. “It’s annoying.”

Shepard brought her empty canteen to her lips, hoping to shake out even a drop. “What’s annoying is you talking to your commanding officer that way,” Shepard shot back. Ashley snorted, shaking her head as she walked ahead, and Shepard glared at Garrus when she caught him smirking too.

They rode up another elevator and shot some more Geth, then Shepard heard a small voice cry out.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” The voice sounded scratchy and weak, but there was something about it...Shepard scurried under some collapsed walkways, and her eyes landed on an asari held high in the air by a blue circular field.

Shepard never worked so fast in her life, using a mining laser to punch through the the chamber below and deactivating the security trap by hitting the buttons the asari indicated. When the field shimmered out of existence, Shepard caught the asari in her arms. Glazed blue eyes blinked up at her.

Shepard motioned for Ashley’s canteen. “Here. You must have been in there a while,” Shepard said, bringing the water to the asari’s lips. She smiled gratefully and gulped greedily, and Shepard’s throat stopped burning.

Shepard looked at her with wide eyes, and all she could think was _one in five._ She _was one in five_. She mentally apologized for all the times she’d frowned at even the mere mention of soulmates. And for all the Valentine’s hearts she’d ripped up spitefully over the years.

“What’s your name?” Shepard asked, cradling the woman even closer to her as she continued to hold her up.

“Liara.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed reading, and feel free to leave pairing suggestions. I do prefer femslash, but I have plans to do F/M pairings. Be aware that in this AU, soulmates don't automatically mean romantic relationships. Plus, since this story is supposed to be very fluffy and G-rated, most of the pairings can be taken whichever way you wish.
> 
> They'll all be pretty short, since I'm just doing the first meeting/realization. Though I could be convinced to expand if there was enough interest.


	2. Wrists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Female Shepard/Miranda

Her parents were soulmates, managed to find each other against all the odds in some backwater colony. Shepard’s mother told her how she had loved her father the moment she’d first felt him there, warm and supportive at the back of her mind. They’d worked out a system where they’d squeeze their own wrist in support whenever they felt the other in pain, and that’s how they eventually recognized each other.

Shepard took for granted that she'd be like them and cried the day her father had to tell her that most people never found their soulmate, that they were never given so much as a glimpse of who the person was. Shepard had been terrified that she’d already seen her soulmate and passed them by without ever knowing, and she cried even harder later that evening as she’d tried squeezing her wrist without response. She’d glared at the wall, thinking of the blurry picture in her head that was her soulmate. Why didn't they answer her back? Didn’t they know that’s what soulmates did?

She watched and waited, waited for the some sign from the person destined as her other half, but there was hardly anything from them. Shepard felt them _there_ at the back of her mind, but they felt dark, discontent. From then on, she spent whole evenings locked in her room, devastated that her soulmate didn’t seem to like her.

* * *

 

They hauled her into the operating room and strapped her in, metal restraints at her wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. _No, no, no, no!_ Miranda panicked and struggled against them, but they wouldn’t budge; her thirteen year old body was no match for the steel that encircled her.

Father had decided she needed biotics, now that human scientists had finally figured out how they worked, the only problem being that Miranda hadn’t been exposed to element zero in the womb. So he had come up with the next best solution: implant the biotic nodules manually. The doctors double checked her restraints and then hooked her up to an IV before injecting a cocktail of drugs, including a paralytic. A large portion of the operation would be brain surgery: she wouldn’t feel anything, but she had to be awake.

There was a pressure on her wrist, not the restraints, and Miranda’s eyes flickered down: her soulmate again. She hadn’t even been sure she would have a soulmate, given her origins, and Father had been less than thrilled when Miranda first mentioned it. But that squeeze on her wrist always came eventually, even as she tried her hardest to ignore it. Why bother trying to find her soulmate? Father would just take them away like he did everything else.

Strapped into the chair, though, Miranda wanted, for the first time, to squeeze her wrist back, but she couldn’t move her arms. She tried to scream when they started cutting into the base of her skull, but the paralytic held her throat in its grip as well.

She was able to scream hours later, though, when she woke feeling like her whole body was on fire.

* * *

 

N7 training was brutal; the hand-to-hand even more so. Shepard could barely land anything on her partner; she feinted left, right, went for the hit, and was rewarded with a punch to the stomach. A sharp pinch on the inside of her left wrist followed, and Shepard rolled her eyes fondly.

“What are you smiling at?” her training partner teased. “You’re getting your ass kicked.”

Shepard scowled at him. “My soulmate just likes to get me back everytime I get hit,” she explained. It should annoy her, but after those early years of feeling like they wanted nothing to do with her, Shepard was happy that her soulmate was now so ‘vocal.’

“Well, whoever they are, they sound like a bitch,” her partner said.

Shepard did manage to land one hit that session: right then when she decked him.

* * *

 

“Wilson, where is that report? I asked you for it ten minutes ago,” Miranda spoke into the speaker of her omni-tool while she shuffled datapads on her desk. Her hand migrated instinctively to her wrist as she grew more anxious—sometimes it was just nice to know her soulmate was _there_ —but then she ripped her arm back to her side, feeling worse than before. Nothing could help her forget how it’d felt to feel her soulmate die (it had been a fiery, painful death so horrible that she’d curled into a ball and cried for the first time in fifteen years), but sometimes she could almost forget that they weren’t there. Though lately there had been these lingering...feelings. Wishful thinking, most definitely.

Miranda stood from her desk and made her way to the lab where a human figure lay partially covered by a sheet. Her work, at least, was a welcome distraction from the aching emptiness.

“Here you are, Operative Lawson,” Wilson said, entering the room behind her. “The write-up of yesterday’s trials. And as you can see, Shepard has remained steady throughout the night.”

Wilson motioned to the body on the table proudly, and Miranda sniffed in response. She had agreed to his experimental technique, but she wasn’t ready to applaud him on its success. Miranda walked to the table and folded down the sheet, revealing the golden freckled skin of the partially reconstructed Commander Shepard. Her eyes flickered between the machines showing normal stats and the obviously improved complexion of Shepard. Circulation was improved, and blood pressure was back into the right ranges. Perhaps Wilson wasn’t so incompetent after all.

Then, just as Miranda’s hand brushed against Shepard’s shoulder, Miranda felt a lurch deep in her chest. She doubled over at the feeling, fingers pawing uselessly at her throat while, in the corner of her eye, she saw Shepard’s arm move.

“Miranda, what’s wrong with you? Help me! She’s waking up!” Wilson’s panicked voice called across the table.

Miranda scrambled upright, pain shooting through every part of her body like fireworks. The pain was so sudden; it didn’t make sense. But when she saw Shepard’s arm reach out once again, Miranda reacted, making the connection she wasn’t ready to admit out loud yet. She grabbed quickly for Shepard's left wrist, squeezing hard.

“It's okay, Shepard. Calm down,” Miranda hushed her. Shepard stilled almost immediately. Her emerald eyes locked onto Miranda like a lifeline, and some of the panic flooded from Miranda as well.

“What are you waiting for?” Miranda snapped at Wilson, who stood there staring. “Get the sedative. She's not ready to be awake yet.”

The sedative sank in, but Miranda rubbed again at the new ache in her throat and added, “And increase her morphine.”

Wilson looked at her oddly but, for once, complied without question.

* * *

 

Shepard filed down to the cargo bay, pressing at her temples. She thought after a few days of being on the new _Normandy_ she would start feeling back to normal, but everything was wrong. They may have produced an almost perfect copy of her old ship, but they hadn't replaced the people.

One woman in particular sat wrong with her: Miranda Lawson. She was gorgeous, flawless really, and Shepard just couldn't manage to hate her even though she felt obligated to try. Miranda was Cerberus, and Shepard hated Cerberus. Unfortunately, her feelings on Miranda were…different, a combination of unexplainable attraction and irritated, forced dislike. Shepard almost felt bad for her soulmate, who must be frustrated at her for constantly feeding them this stream of conflicted feelings.

Though, for that matter, Shepard was glad she could feel her soulmate at all. Their playful sternness was gone, replaced by a wary reproachfulness, but Shepard could feel them there and that was something. Shepard couldn't really blame them for being suspicious, seeing as she'd died and been gone for such a long time.

She sighed and set up the punching bag, flexed her muscles, and then hopped back and forth as she readied herself. She threw a first punch, and from the moment her fist made contact with the bag, it was like the anxiety flowed right out of her.

She kept that up for a while, feeling lighter and lighter until she heard the elevator ding. The clicking of already familiar heels sounded from the doorway, and Shepard flinched, all the frustration she'd just worked out flooding back tenfold.

The punching bag swung back, coming through during Shepard's distraction to throw her bodily to the floor. She heard a short, clipped laugh as she lay groaning on the ground, and a few moments later, Miranda stood over her, steel blue eyes glinting in amusement. Then she smiled, reached over, and gave a sharp pinch to the inside of her left wrist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was written faster than I imagine the others will be, mostly because it was already planned in my head when I wrote the first one-shot. Enjoy, and once again, feel free to leave a pairing suggestion! Thanks for reading!


	3. Right Behind You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Female Shepard/Garrus

The thing about her soulmate was that she barely noticed he was there. Sure, the occasional sting of pain would remind her of his presence, but his reactions to his own pain were so muted— _trained_ , she thought, _to ignore it_ —that her body barely felt it. Shepard almost felt guilty that her own pain must transfer to him so strongly.

She wasn’t a stranger to pain; that would be unnatural for a soldier. But damn if she didn’t hiss and bellyache every time a bullet managed to slice through her suit or she was slammed, face first, into the ground by an opponent. In fact, her bunkmate delighted in tipping her off her mattress every morning, and her replying curses only seemed to make the pain worse. Shepard’s elbows hadn’t fared well in the multiple hard landings.

Yet, even her pain, it seemed, was taken by her soulmate with nary a misstep. Acknowledged, pushed down, and then pushed past like the pain had never been. She knew, somehow, that what was exactly how he’d gotten through learning about his soulmate in the first place: accepted that she was there before pushing her to the back of his mind. Perhaps someone else would have been offended to be so easily swept aside, a piece of dust at the back of the mind to keep shoving under the proverbial rug, but Shepard understood. In the same way, she thought he must understand her passive ignoring of him. She was a soldier. Likely, he was too. They might never meet, and there were more important things to be done with their thoughts than let them linger on each other. Shepard admired his discipline, whoever he was.

* * *

 

Garrus woke to the quiet ching of a metal spoon falling to the ground, mixing with the steady beeping of the monitor that had lulled him to sleep. He lifted his head from the palm he’d rested it in and stretched out his neck, lifting his arms above his head to do the same for his back.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” his mother apologized from the bed with a weak turn of her chin. He rose and pulled his chair closer to the side of the bed, grabbing her hand.

“You should have woken me sooner,” he groused. “I’m supposed to be keeping you company.”

“You work hard,” she said, placing a gentle hand on his face. “I think you deserve a little sleep. Whatever Solana says, I’m still perfectly capable of entertaining myself.” She waved a hand to a well-worn datapad that he knew she kept a large collection of book titles on.

Garrus’ eyes flickered down to the spoon on the floor and registered the tray of food that had been placed in front of her. Solana, his sister, had been sent to acquire real food, not this nonsense from the cafeteria, but Garrus’ mother still always ate the pudding that came with the hospital meal. He stooped to grab the spoon and held it up.

“I’ll go get a new one. For the pudding,” he offered, and she smiled with a nod.

Garrus made his way out of the room, pulling the door gently shut behind him, and tread down the hallway in search of the cafeteria. He thought he remembered it being a floor down, but after taking the elevator and finding himself in a foreign hallway, Garrus growled at his memory. He went forward anyway. Perhaps he would run into a nurse that would redirect him.

Garrus was distracted from his course by a heavy sigh emanating from a nearby room. Peeking in, he saw an old turian, perched precariously at the edge of his bed while he stretched a leg out towards a wheelchair that was just out of his reach.

“Need a hand?” Garrus asked, stepping through the doorway.

“Yes!” he exclaimed, motioning Garrus forward. “I have an appointment to keep, and the nurse won’t come back fast enough.”

The older man was, in fact, dressed very well, in a tailored suit that smelled slightly musty, but looked nice all the same. Garrus hurried to his side and pulled the wheelchair forward, offering an arm to lower the gentleman into the seat. He beamed up at Garrus and patted his arm in thanks.

“Where’s the appointment?” Garrus asked. “I could take you.”

“Just in the lobby. And would you?” After Garrus nodded and took the wheelchair handles, he continued, “I’m Tiberius. And very grateful for the help.”

“Must be something important,” Garrus needled curiously.

“Oh, it is. I’m meeting my soulmate today,” Tiberius explained with a tightened grasp on the armrests.

The plates on Garrus’ forehead shot up in surprise. He looked down at the older turian, who was almost wiggling in excitement like he could barely stand to be in the chair. Very un-turian-like behavior, he sniffed, but Garrus softened when the turian directed another smile at him, reaching a weathered hand back to pat his own in appreciation.

“So soulmate? How did they find you?” Garrus asked.

The old man heaved a sigh sigh in reply, shaking his head as emphasis to his frown.

“I was released from the psychiatric ward after twenty years only to land right back in the hospital for kidney failure,” Tiberius explained. Garrus’ mandibles flicked out on the mention of the psychiatric ward. “But my soulmate is a surgeon and recognized my pain symptoms. He broke a lot of rules running through medical records until he found me.”

“What are the odds you were even on the same planet? He might have never found you,” Garrus replied with a frown as he wheeled the both of them onto the elevator and hit the button for the lobby.

“That’s true, and we weren’t. Michael said he’s spent five years looking in his free time. That is, until he found my record from some testing I did at the specialty center on the Citadel. Said he had a ‘good feeling’ before he called me and flicked his arm to prove it. Now he’s here,” Tiberius said, beaming again.

“May I ask….?”

“Why I was in the psychiatric ward?” Tiberius beat him to it. “I kept insisting that there was a species out there we still hadn’t discovered: the humans. But no one would believe that there was another lifeform intelligent enough for us to be connected with.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Garrus mused. “ Even before the Relay 314 Incident, it was understood how large the universe is. It’s not unlikely that there are many intelligent beings out there that we don’t know about. It’s what makes the concept of soulmates so terrifying. They could be in another galaxy for all we know; it’s not as if someone wrote down the rules for us.”

“Yes, but no one else was speaking up quite like I was. I _knew_ my soulmate was human even before I had a name for him. But I was continually dismissed. An asari, they said he was,” Tiberius scoffed.

“Maybe they didn’t want to upset people. I mean, think of all the planets and space stations a soulmate could be on without considering that they could be an alien you’ve never even seen that lives billions of lightyears away from you,” Garrus replied.

“I suppose we all need a little hope. I could have done without fifteen years of hospital food,” Tiberius said with a scowl. “But maybe it was all worth it. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten this far otherwise.”

Garrus grimaced at the sentimentality even as the warmth of it lit up and reached the corners of his admittedly rather unsentimental heart. The elevator doors finally opened, and Garrus wheeled Tiberius out and positioned him in front of a the lobby window that the old man directed him towards. He took a seat on the bench next to him, not quite ready to leave since Michael hadn’t arrived yet.

“Have you met yours yet?” Tiberius asked kindly.

“No,” Garrus admitted, though he couldn’t fight off the smile that unwittingly crept up at the mere mention of _her_. “But I know she’s a human too.”

Tiberius mirrored his smile. “Well, I hope you get a ‘good feeling’ about her too.”

* * *

 

The way she was drawn to him was...disconcerting. Never had she allowed something like this to distract her from a mission. After all, you don’t become _the_ Commander Shepard, war hero of the Skyllian Blitz and first human Spectre, without superior focus. Focus which should be directed at the guns she was helping Chief Williams clean and store but instead was dragged helplessly over to a certain turian whose legs stuck out from under the Mako in a way that, quite frankly, she found adorable.

“Maybe I’m not the one who needs to be ordered to kiss a turian,” Williams quipped.

“Ash,” Shepard snapped in warning, and Williams just shrugged as if to say, ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

 _Because of course she is,_ Shepard thought to herself angrily. She wasn’t sure about the kissing part. How would that even work when he didn’t have, well, lips? Not to mention, Shepard hadn’t even considered whether or not she was even physically attracted to turians. Yet, she still found herself gravitating towards Garrus almost on instinct when he was in a room and felt relieved every time her eyes landed on him during a fight.

Garrus was solid and steady, and Shepard found herself relying on him in a way that she hadn’t allowed herself to do with others. He handed her a gun, and she didn’t automatically check the connections, reassure herself that everything was put together properly because, of course, Garrus would have taken care of that. When he offered opinions, they were insightful and straightforward, something she appreciated especially as she rose in military ranks and others were less and less inclined to give their real opinions.

Her favorite part, however, was that every time the team stepped off the shuttle and Shepard gave the orders, Garrus would respond with, “Right behind you, Shepard.” He said it, and she believed him. Sometimes that made all of the difference in the world.

So as the months rolled by with the two of them working together, Shepard began to consider if _maybe_ , _possibly_ Garrus might actually be her soulmate. She’d tried to notice every time he was injured, to see if she felt pain in the same spot, but like always, the sensation from her soulmate was muted, more like an itch than actual pain. Shepard couldn’t get anything conclusive. But if they were soulmates, certainly he would have felt her and said something? She was hardly subtle. He had to have noticed.

 

Garrus didn’t notice. He continued on obliviously right through the Battle of the Citadel and beyond. There were a few times, like when Shepard had fallen off the platform to tumble down in the garden with Saren, that he’d felt strangely timed pain. But, honestly, that could just be a coincidence. It didn’t mean anything.

He liked Shepard. Of course he did, but that didn’t mean he had any right to say something when they were on such an important mission. Feelings were for later, for after. Yet, Sovereign was defeated, the _Normandy_ crew was sent to fight geth, and Garrus had still never managed to speak his feelings. If he even had feelings. Really, he was probably just tricking himself into thinking someone like _Commander Shepard_ could be his soulmate.

 

Garrus didn’t realize how clueless he’d been until he was writhing in agony on the floor of an escape pod, and he could see Shepard through the window as a ball of flame burning in the atmosphere of the planet below.

* * *

 

Garrus knew the moment Shepard took a breath again for the first time. The world felt empty, and then, suddenly, it wasn’t. He didn’t understand how it was possible, only that it _was_ , and he needed to find her. When it happened, he was preparing with his Omega team for another mission. It would be his last, he decided, and then he would go and look for her.

That is, until Sidonis betrayed him, and everything went to shit. He sat, crouched uncomfortably with his back against a metal wall, and cursed the bastard’s name into oblivion amidst the bodies of his dead men. They were gone. All of them. Because of him. And now Garrus was backed into a corner with three mercenary bands after him at once, and all he could think of was, by some miracle, Shepard was alive somewhere and he’d never get to see her. Spirits, he’d been an idiot.

He took a steadying breath and leaned up over the ledge to scan the area again with his scope, and his heart leapt into his throat at the sight of a red stripe on black armor. It wasn’t possible. Garrus looked again, and it was _her._ She was alive, and she was fighting her way toward him. Shepard. Shepard had found him from beyond the grave. Because why was he surprised that she would do anything different?

She called him Archangel, and Garrus realized she didn’t even know it was him she was fighting so hard for. He pulled off his helmet and met her smile when it stretched slow and warm across her face. Garrus wrapped his arms around her, and he clasped her in a fierce hug. He kept holding. And holding. She turned her face into the part of his neck that was exposed above his armor, and he squeezed even harder. Never again, he promised himself, would she go off without him.

When he let go, he realized he’d actually been crying. It had been caused by days without sleep, certainly, or seeing his team die. The stress of being close to dying had overwhelmed him. But Shepard reached up with a bemused smile and wiped the tear away. Very un-turian-like behavior, he knew, to turn into a puddle over some human woman, but he’d never been a very good turian to begin with.

Shepard came up with a plan to fight their way out past the remaining mercs, and Garrus hoisted his rifle onto his shoulder and took up his place beside her.

“Right behind you, Shepard,” he promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to know what everyone thinks! Don't forget: if you'd like to see a certain pairing, I'd be happy to consider it. Just mention it in a comment! 
> 
> I also shamelessly ask you all to consider checking out my other fic, [Who Do You Fight For](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5182193/chapters/11939018). It's still in the Mass Effect universe, and it's a femslash story with Miranda/Shepard. I'm trying to do something different by telling the entire story outside of the perspective of Commander Shepard. Anyway, it's my first real attempt at something so long, and I really love getting feedback. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments so far. I really appreciate it!


	4. Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Miranda Lawson/Ashley Williams

    Ashley dug her toes into the grass, her head propped up on her folded arms as she reclined in the grass. She tilted her face to the right to put the blinding sun behind a tree branch then smiled to herself as she started her audiobook with a sigh.

    “Whatcha doin’?” Sarah asked, dropping down next to her older sister. Ashley scowled at her, bemoaning the loss of the quiet hour she thought she’d have.

    “I was trying to take some time for myself, if you must know,” Ashley replied.

    Sarah snorted. “Good luck with that.”

    “Did you need something?” Ashley asked, trying her best to keep her annoyance out of her voice. Sarah was her baby sister, and she loved her. Ashley loved all of her sisters, even if some days she had to keep repeating it to remind herself.

    “Abby wanted your help with the planning,” Sarah revealed. She rolled over in the grass, resting her chin on a hand.

    “Planning...I thought we’d decided against that?” Ashley asked.

    “No, you decided against it. You were listening last night, right?”

    “Abby is still a child. Just because she’s found her soulmate does not mean she needs to get married so quickly,” Ashley growled. It was the same mantra she’d said over and over the previous evening as well.

    Sarah’s voice softened. “She just wants to make sure you’re involved. And this way she can make sure you can be there. You’re on leave _right_ now. In a month, you might not make it to your own sister’s wedding.”

    Ashley squinted into the sun again and sighed. “I’ll be inside in a moment. Give me five minutes, alright?”

    Sarah nodded and crossed the yard to disappear back into the house, and Ashley banged an aggravated fist against the ground. She should be happy. Her sister found her soulmate (which is almost _impossible_ ), and Abby was going to go on to live a wonderful life with her other half. The man, Gabriel, was everything she could have asked for for her sister: kind, handsome, strong, a _man_.

    Ashley was absolutely not jealous. She was the oldest, responsible one, and ever since Dad became increasingly absent and Mom couldn’t quite handle four girls on her own, there was no room for Ashley to be jealous of some of the things her sisters got that she didn’t, the things they got because Ashley was working her ass off in the background to provide. Ashley was there when they needed boy advice, and she was there when a date needed a stern ‘talk’ (she’d gotten really good at the ‘you hurt my sister and I’ll hurt you’ one). She made school lunches and sat in the front row for all the school performances. And, sure, she probably would have done all of those things even if her dad had been around, but the point was that it would have been a choice.

    If nothing else, Ashley had more than proven that she didn’t need anyone to take care of her; she could take care of herself, her mother, her sisters. She was strong enough. Still, when she imagined her soulmate, he was always the caretaker. He took care of her, not because she needed it, but simply because he wished to. They would be equals, and she wouldn’t feel like she had to be so strong _all_ of the time.

    Ashley tried to picture her soulmate lying the grass next to her, the fuzzy image in her brain trying to map out a strong jaw with _maybe_ a little stubble around it. Yet, for some reason, the picture felt wrong. The same wrongness that twisted her stomach every time she’d tried before.

    She scratched at her arm, a persistent sting of pain that traced in loops across the skin of her wrist.

* * *

 

    Miranda got a tattoo on her wrist as soon as she was away from her father. All it said was ‘Lawson,’ and even she wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by getting it. Was it labeling herself as always a Lawson, even when she didn’t want to be, or perhaps a reminder of what she was working to stay away from? Maybe it was just her one way of making her body imperfect, of spitting in her father’s face with his own name.

    In any case, it served a purpose, outlining the path she would trace on her wrist with a fingernail, stylus, omni-tool, anything that would make her soulmate feel the letters in return. Unless her soulmate was a complete moron, they would figure out that the pain was forming a word eventually, and since her soulmate was human, they would recognize her name from her father’s multi-billion dollar company. (Lucky that her soulmate was human at all, really, to make it easier to catch the reference, especially since statistics had shown same-species soulmates between humans becoming more rare since they’d joined the galactic community. The same could likely be said for other species as well, but Miranda didn’t have access to those kinds of studies.) The downside was that Miranda hadn’t exactly made herself easy to find. Keeping herself and her sister hidden from their father had been her main goal for decades, after all.

    “Miranda, are you ready to go? Joker said we’re approaching the Omega-4 relay. I’d like for everyone to be on deck when we go through,” Commander Shepard said, peeking her head into Miranda’s office.

    Miranda started, yanked out of her thoughts, and quickly pulled her glove back on when Shepard’s eyes zeroed in on the tattoo on her wrist. Their eyes met, and Shepard bit her lip, ultimately giving a tight smile and leaving her alone in her office again.

    Miranda sighed and rubbed at her temples once the door was shut behind the commander. She should be focused on something more important than dying in a suicide mission without ever having met her soulmate. In fact, she should probably be more focused on preventing the dying part.

    But it was difficult when she could feel the loathing that echoed over her soulmate connection, the same burning dislike that happened every time she traced her name. It used to be just a trickle, a slight discomfort, but roughly a month ago, it had cascaded into active animosity. Miranda wasn’t sure how her soulmate managed to hate her already (she was also fairly certain she hadn’t even met them yet), but if the one person in the universe who was supposed to be her other half, supposed to love her unconditionally, didn’t want anything to do with her...well, who was surprised, honestly?

* * *

 

Pain wracked through Ashley’s stomach, knocking her to her knees in the middle of Sanctuary. She wrapped her arms around herself, gasping as she tried to avoid falling in the blood of the Cerberus soldiers they’d just killed while Shepard hurried over to her in concern.

“What is it Ash? What’s happening?” Shepard asked.

“Soulmate,” Ashley managed to grit out. “Not me.”

Shepard’s face went white, her hand gripping on Ashley’s arm so tight she hissed in more pain. They heard the recording at the same time.

“This is Miranda Lawson. If you managed to get this far, you must be desperate or stupid…”

Ashley looked around at the dead Reaper creatures and the bodies of Cerberus soldiers littered around the room. Cerberus, the organization trying to kill Miranda, and the Reapers, who were trying to kill everyone. And Miranda had come here alone.

Ashley was now the one digging her fingers into Shepard’s arm. “She’s here?” Ashley confirmed, panicked. “We have to get to her.” Ashley indicated the pain in her stomach. “Shepard, I...I never told her…”

Shepard blew out a sigh as she helped Ashley up, slinging her arm over her shoulders so she could help her walk until the pain subsided. They shuffled forward hastily, barely managing to keep from all out running.

“I know. Miranda...she knew, too, eventually. She just never said anything,” Shepard confided as they went.

“Why didn’t she?” Ashley asked as they moved farther into Sanctuary, following frantically after the ex-Cerberus operative.

“Because she thought you hated her,” Shepard replied gruffly, the corners of her mouth twitching down and going tight. Guilt flooded up to constrict Ashley’s throat.

“She just...wasn’t what I was expecting,” Ashley said.

But when they reached the center of Sanctuary and Ashley saw Miranda crumpled on the floor, bright red blood staining the white of her suit, it didn’t matter what she’d been expecting. She ran straight to her, even with Henry Lawson bouncing a bullet off her shields, and protected Miranda’s body with her own.

Later, when Shepard managed to talk Henry Lawson down, and Miranda had gotten off the floor long enough to subsequently blast him out of a window, Ashley kneeled by her and gently bandaged her soulmate’s stomach, ignoring the fluttering in her chest as Miranda stared up at her, quietly allowing herself to be tended to.

They flew the shuttle in closer, and Ashley held Miranda’s hand the entire ride back to the _Normandy_. Then she fell asleep in a chair next to Miranda’s bed in the medbay, still holding her hand.

 

A few months later, the Reaper War was finally over. Ashley’s right leg had been repaired with cybernetics (she was well on her way to being just like Shepard) courtesy of Miranda, and Miranda herself had one lone scar across her abdomen (the only thing besides her tattoo that made her body imperfect). Miranda kept a hand under Ashley's elbow as she worked through her physical therapy, Ashley gritting her teeth as she tried for what felt like the millionth time to make her leg work correctly.

They took a break, and Ashley watched as Miranda stepped away to grab them both some water, the light shining in through the window to make a halo around Miranda’s ink black hair, and she smiled. It had taken her too long to realize it, but her soulmate didn’t need to be a man to be strong, to have the ability to take care of her when she needed it. To be her perfect, equal complement in everything they did. Miranda Lawson was the strongest, most incredible person Ashley had ever met. _And_ , she thought, linking her fingers to Miranda’s, _I can’t believe I ever wanted anyone else._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for any mistakes. I'm doing everything on mobile at the moment, but hopefully I caught everything. 
> 
> I'd love to hear if you all liked the chapter, and I'm still open to pairing requests! I'm basically doing them in the order I receive them, which means Shepard/Thane is next! (Then M!Shep/Tali and M!Shep/Jack). I can also write more for a pairing that already has a chapter, or expand on a chapter or concept, if someone is interested in that. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
